President
Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Justice Department's criminal
division represented a Russian bank named in the dossier compiled
by a former British spy detailing the Trump campaign's alleged
ties to Moscow.

Brian Benczkowski, who worked on Trump's campaign and his
transition team between September and January, represented
Russia's Alfa Bank until June 6 - the day he was formally
nominated to lead the Justice Department's criminal division. He
disclosed that work in a letter to Congress dated July 19.

Alfa Bank was discussed at length in the explosive but unverified
dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, though
it was misspelled as "Alpha" throughout.

"Speaking to a trusted compatriot in mid-September 2016, a top
level Russian government official commented on the history and
current state of relations between President Putin and the Alpha
Group of businesses led by oligarchs Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven
and German Khan," the dossier said.

Fridman is the founder of Alfa Bank, Petr Aven was the bank's
president from 1994 to 2011, and German Khan is on the bank's
supervisory board.

Fortune
reported in November that the oligarchs who controlled Alfa
Bank, while politically powerful, were also "the most
enduringly successful, western-oriented (if hard-edged)
capitalists in Russia," and were therefore unlikely to feel
loyal to Putin.

The dossier acknowledged that, writing that the Putin-Alfa
relationship was "both carrot and stick."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking
Democrat, said during
Benczkowski's confirmation hearing on Tuesday that Benczkowski
reviewed the Steele dossier for Alfa Bank "to consider suing
BuzzFeed for defamation over their online publication of the
dossier."

"Alfa Bank, in fact, did sue BuzzFeed on May 26 of this year,"
Feinstein said.

Benczkowski said later that he only read two pages
of the dossier and did not "independently investigate any of the
facts."

"My work on that was very, very limited. I spent fewer than five
hours on that matter while I was working for Alfa Bank,"
Benczkowski said. "It was simply to review those facts, assume
that they are false and then give the client preliminary advice
whether they should move forward in thinking about a defamation
action."

Feinstein
further alleged however that Benczkowski's work for Alfa Bank
"went to the heart of the reported [FBI] investigations" into the
bank's involvement in unusual computer server activity with the
Trump Organization during the election.

She noted that he "worked with a computer forensics firm to
determine any ties between servers of Alfa Bank and the Trump
Organization."

According to CNN, Alfa Bank's server "repeatedly looked up the
contact information for a computer server being used by the Trump
Organization [during the election] - far more than other
companies did, representing 80% of all lookups to the Trump
server."

The FBIinvestigated why the
server appeared to have a disproportionate interest in
reaching a server used by the Trump Organization, in a way that
was akin to looking up someone's phone number thousands of times.

Investigators have so far found no evidence that Russian
officials communicated with the Trump campaign via those servers,
according to The
New York Times. But independent cybersecurity experts have still
been unable to give the company a clean bill of health, the Times
said.

Feinstein questioned why Benczkowski, who took the Alfa Bank job
two months after leaving the Trump transition team, continued
working there until June even though Attorney General Jeff
Sessions first approached him about the Justice Department
position in April.

"After he found out about his potential nomination, why did he
continue his representation of Alfa Bank?" Feinstein asked.

She added that, because it was "clear" to her that Benczkowski
had knowledge of issues related to the ongoing investigation, she
asked him if he would commit to recusing himself from cases
involving Alfa Bank and matters involving Special Counsel Robert
Mueller's probe into Russia's election interference.

"He would not commit to recusing himself," Feinstein said. "I'm
concerned with his refusal, especially given the position for
which he has been nominated."

Benczkowski replied that he "played no role" in the Trump
campaign.

"I had no title. I didn't advise the campaign, I didn't
communicate with the campaign in any meaningful way, I didn't
give any money, I didn't raise any money. I served as the head of
the DOJ transition, which is a separate entity from the
campaign," he said. "But I want to be clear, I played no role in
the Trump campaign."